GW Artists Present Environmental Performance at Lisner Auditorium

GW dance choreographer Maida Withers, produced a spectacular dance, music and visual performance entitled Aurora/2001: Dance of the Auroras – Fire in the Sky at GW’s Lisner Auditorium, on February 15 & 16, 2001.   Aurora/2001 was a multidimensional performance that took the audience on a poetic voyage through space from the Sun through Earth’s auroras, the mystic luminaries of the Arctic and Antarctic skies known as the northern and southern lights. 

Aurora/2001 featured choreography by GW artist Maida Withers, a real-time interactive visual installation by Tania Fraga of Brazil, a virtual reality artist and computer animator and filmmaker David Liban.  The original music score was composed by Øystein Sevåg of Norway and was performed live by Sevåg’s Global House Band. 

The performance featured a stellar international cast including Sasha Kukin (Russia), Iwona Olszowska (Poland), Solveig Leinan Hermo (Norway), Doug Andresen (New York) and Joseph Mills, Adrienne Clancy, Maida Withers (Washington, DC). Visual images and films were provided by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the European Space Agency, and Lockheed Martin Astrophysics Laboratory. 

The Aurora/2001 production also will be featured in Nordly’s Festivalen, an annual festival for the past twelve years in Norway celebrating the northern lights through music, dance and exhibitions under the artistic direction of Bjarte Engeset. For further information, visit the festival web page at http://www.nmok.org/nordfest.